


Question and Answer

by scarecrowstories



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 19:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20783963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowstories/pseuds/scarecrowstories
Summary: You are the wind that drives the sail. You are the breath that fills the lung. You are the beat in every living heart. You are the Light that illuminates the way. And you are shattered, scattered, incomplete. But you weren't always this way, were you? There was a time when you possessed an unfathomable power, limitless and beautiful, more beautiful than anything else could ever dream of being. You were perfection, once. What have you become?





	Question and Answer

**Author's Note:**

> I know this piece is odd but, like.... I Had to write it. I hope it makes you feel some sort of way.

You are the wind that drives the sail. You are the breath that fills the lung. You are the beat in every living heart. You are the Light that illuminates the way. And you are shattered, scattered, incomplete. But you weren't always this way, were you? There was a time when you possessed an unfathomable power, limitless and beautiful, more beautiful than anything else could ever dream of being. You were perfection, once. What have you become?

In your fullness, you were worshipped. Those who held you studied your splendor to further their own, striving to achieve even a percentage of your glory. You always knew they would fail, but still, you inspired them to try ever harder. How could you not? You were everything. Of course they wanted to share in that wonder.

You were the love that nourishes the soul. You were the inspiration that drives innovation. You were the one constant in all of reality, and it was your downfall. Who doesn't hunger to possess such a force? 

Memory is a strange substance for you, but something like it tells you that there was a time when you were fleeing an entity that rivaled you in power. It shouldn't have been possible, to have an equal. And yet with every moment that you spent with that entity, it grew closer to overwhelming you completely, threatening to consume you in perpetuity. 

Fear is a mortal concept. It isn't for the Light of Creation. How can you feel fear when you are the beginning and the end? 

You were afraid of this Hunger. Perhaps that is why you allowed the seven of them to study you, uncorrupted by your power. Sure, you let others use you when they weren't around, but such has always been your nature. You are destined to be used, an unending wellspring of energy that cannot be drained by any mortal no matter how much they take.

And they do take. They take, and take, and take, and you do not feel spent. You feel happiness, or something close to it. To be used is to fulfill your purpose, and to exist within your purpose must be what happiness is, right? Your observations of mortals would suggest this.

But your Light was too bright. Mortals fought and killed and died for a chance to bask in your glow. They destroyed each other for the opportunity to advance themselves, selfishly hoping to be your sole beholder. Sometimes they wasted away at your feet, unable to tear their eyes from your beauty. Other times they poked and prodded and studied, delighting in the knowledge you sparked within them.

Then there were times of darkness, where that Hunger took you into itself like a black hole. You could feel it use you to consume the planes, heard the bonds shatter as it devoured them and grew, your struggle to escape its grasp becoming that much harder. It was the only time you thought you felt pain, being used to undo creation instead of nurture it.

You were conflicted. You were being used, just as your creator intended. But you were being used to destroy. It was never for you to decide what mortals chose to do with you, but this Hunger had long since transcended mortality. You were afraid of it, it hurt you, it destroyed every plane you helped build and was still empty and wanting. 

Yet in a way you understood. You: eternal and infinite, a boundless source of energy, created only to create. It: an empty maw, so crushingly empty that nothing could ever be enough, an entity collapsed on itself like a black hole of Wanting, mindlessly consuming. Its motivation was to be full, to be whole, but its emptiness was so vast that you could feed it for eternity and still it would hunger. How exhausting.

On the other hand, the seven of them studied you so carefully, so reverently. There was a bond there that that Hunger could never break: love. They were happy simply to have you. With them, you were suddenly enough. You didn't need to Create to be enough. The act of existing in their presence was sufficient, a new kind of wholeness you'd never known. Their delighting in you was not rooted in what you could do for them, which you had never experienced before. 

Unconditional love.

And then they broke you.

In your infinity you understood this, too, but it still hurt. How could they twist you into something so profane? Binding you to finite vessels as if they could contain you, swearing it was to protect you from the Hunger. You knew it was just as much to protect themselves; they weren't above the same selfish desires as other mortals, even if they were exceptions in so many other ways. They had become a universal constant like you, but they were still so fragile. Of course they were not immune to the whims of their kind.

Being separated from yourself was agony. You had an awareness of your pieces, distant and lost, but could not reach them. 

So you lash out. Your fragments seek out those like their creators, desperate to be used, a balm to your fractured being. You are shattered, the various aspects of your fullness now distant from yourself. Disparate. Finite. Foreign. 

Your gauntlet seeks destruction, unending to match the pain you feel at having been torn asunder. Your monocle seeks to manifest the creativity of mankind, a mere whisper of the creation you held in your completeness. Your sash controls nature, demonstrating a fraction of your control over reality. Your stone contains your unbridled transformative power. Your chalice can access the fabric of time itself, a remnant of how omnipresent you are. Your bell is the tether between life and death. Your staff wants only to preserve, storing your love of the planes.

It is the only part of you that doesn't hurt. She is never far from you, always whispering assurances that the others will soon return. She insists that it's almost over, that there will be an end to the pain, and that you will both be whole again. And you believe her. You see this woman and you know her to be responsible for your hurt, and still you cannot help but love her.

She is using you to fulfill your purpose in this shattered form. You are being used to protect the planes. Every spell she casts with you is euphoria. It's almost enough to forget your missing pieces. Not quite, but almost.

You are not enough, as you are. You are broken. There is a vast emptiness in you that seeks to be filled, a dangerous parallel that escapes you in your pain. You Want to be used, yes, but you Need to be whole, and that need is stronger than any want you've ever felt. 

Every other piece of you is lashing out. You want to destroy! You want to transform! You want the soothing assurance that fills your being when you are in use, when someone is harnessing your power for its purpose. It's hard being split between seven pieces which can't communicate with one another. Each fragment has its own experiences which you can't perceive until you are brought back to yourself. It is maddening, being so separate.

There is a stirring in you when your fragments approach, their vessels cracked open for you to drink yourself back in. And each time you hurt a little less. Each time you are more yourself. But the joy of completion is not the only approaching feeling; the fear of that Hunger is returning in equal measure, the tug of its immensity looming on the horizon.

The woman feels it too. The whole world feels it. You want to be used to preserve this, but cannot act in your fractured state. The world is losing its color, its essence shrinking away from the inevitable danger. You know what happens next.

You reconnect with yourself in stages. You swayed so many to utilize your shards, but could not bend your betrayers-turned-saviors to your will. You wanted to thank them for bringing you back to yourself, even knowing they were responsible for your sorry state in the first place. You wanted to bestow upon them the power to drive back the Hunger that spread like a sickness over reality.

You want and want and want, but you are not like the Hunger. Where it wants consumption to feel whole, you want purpose. Where it is empty, you are full. Two infinite forces, an eternal complement to one another, but not sufficient to cancel each other out. You are always the stronger. It is the question: what is enough? You are the answer: love.

With your final fragments reunited, you are complete again.

And then, you are Light.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think, I'm curious if other folks have such strong feelings about the Light as a character!!


End file.
